


Asteria Prime

by Silius1



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, MMORPGs, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22626259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silius1/pseuds/Silius1





	1. Table of Contents

* * *

Work In progress!

* * *

Table of Contents:

* * *

Classes

* * *

Melee:

Outrider (Barbarian/Samurai) "We will make this battlefield shake like no other!" Considered the melee glass cannon of the game, Outriders are among the first to step forward onto the battlefield no matter how perilous as they have no word for foolishness or weakness in their vocabulary. Their absence of armor may make such charges into the fray risky since it means that they have minimal protection from their enemies, but to the Outriders, they invite their enemies to try killing them when they face unrivaled and unrestricted strength that easily exceeds the norm of the average fighter.

Legionnaire (Knight) "We must hold the line no matter the cost!" Without question Asteria's defensive wall, those who train themselves to become the indomitable legionnaires carry with them the legacy of the extinct dwarves whom were completely wiped out during the great war against the dragonkin, the undead, and the lycanthropes from the Falcon Highlands far to the northeast of uncharted Altena.

Skyguard (Swashbuckler) "Life is for the young! Stability is for the weak and adventure is the greatest of vices!" The Skyguards, originating from the port city of Aurora in eastern Striodor are among the flightiest adventurers and ruin-seekers from ancient civilizations of all Uscaria which incidentally led many of them to become knowledgeable scholars in their own right as they know things from their spelunking that few others know.

Paragon (Paladin) "To the righteous we bring hope. To the tainted we bring fire." Considered the sacred protectors of civilization, the Paragons are publicly known as the largest military peacekeeping organization throughout Uscaria and serve as the first line of defense in the event of any invasion as Paragons are routinely deployed throughout the land and act as perimeter guards who defend those who need their aid.

Sunlord (Dragon Knight) "We know our masters: the gods of old that manifest as true dragon-kind. Our loyalty to our gods is rewarded with unparalleled knowledge and power." The Sunlords are an admittedly small isolationist sect of warriors whose main base operates out of a mountain base situated on the outskirts of an inhospitable wasteland within northern Thadova which is controlled by one of the six great dragon lords with their outposts built around other massive mountain ranges scattered throughout the land, with much of their power coming from the dragon lords that each warrior vows loyalty to.

* * *

Rogue:

Trickster (Thief) "Gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat, Simply don't have the luxury to distinguish good and evil." It is an unfortunate fact of life that thieves exist in any world but after a particularly vicious war that rocked Uscaria forty years ago, the scars still existing on the land, an orphan from the village of Nagandra, which was among many that were destroyed, known only as Magda gathered orphans much like her

Moonlord (Assassin)

Tempest (Ninja)

Shadowdancer (Shadow)

Harbinger (Beastmaster)

* * *

Magic:

Windwalker (Warlord)

Aegis (Healer)

Mystic (Red Mage)

Demonbinder (Summoner)

Ravager (Theurgist)

* * *

Races: Human, Elf, Dragonkin, Orc, Undead, Dark Elf, Lizardman, Mermaid, Nekomata, Lycanthrope (called in-universe as Faolan)

* * *

Nations of Uscaria: Thadova Federation, Osana Alliance, Striodor Republic, Altena Theocracy, Xelionia Union

World name: Ibrilia


	2. Chapter 2

“Time to meet your maker Cryptalion!”

It had taken a month to traverse the labyrinth for this group of four fighters, which wouldn’t have taken that long provided they weren’t busy with their end of year exams from their high school in addition to how they don’t have the whole team with them which would’ve only taken a week and a half, but their effort has paid off as they faced the massive humanoid chimera befitting what was portrayed within the mythological legends, standing in the middle of the circular chamber in the farthest reach of what is currently considered one of the hardest dungeons in the server within the first VRMMORPG game on the market: Asteria Prime since it's a raid dungeon meant for end-game content, though the classification is technically incorrect since Asteria wasn’t built from the ground up with virtual reality in mind, but incorporated VR support by popular request five years into its lifespan, becoming increasingly widespread by those who have powerful enough computers to handle both it and the game by this point of time, though ironically, the population who uses the VR technology is at a low 17 percent.

The leader of the group: Ashikaga, a Windwalker which is a mage class with heavy emphasis toward support and debuff magic, with ten times the amount of MP compared to other mage classes to compensate for the Windwalker’s abysmal attack and defense power, in addition to how it only has three spells which can actually damage enemies, which are all non-elemental and thus don’t have any boosts or weaknesses, in addition to how much emphasis is placed on mana readjustment among parties being critical for major dungeon raids like this, is at the entrance of the room, staff in hand, her face cloaked behind a mask she designed around the mythological kitsune, primarily colored black with a variety of shapes colored yellow, purple, and indigo throughout the mask though the nosepiece is entirety shaded in gray with a long diamond shape in the middle colored yellow supported by purple highlights, though her bright blue hair is evident as it is kept in a side ponytail hung just slightly below her shoulder and her long elven ears, as she prepares to oversee the battle with her three companions’ HP and MP bars visible in her FOV.

The first among them to charge into battle is the nekomata Outrider: Minatoya, the nekomata race oft considered a good fit, if riskier since it compounds severe weaknesses, for Outriders as they have bonuses to attack damage and speed, but this combination has the disadvantage of making said players into very frail melee glass cannons: Minatoya, her lack of a helmet allowing her long flowing blonde hair to flow in the wind of her dash, her speed hardly deterred by her violet tinted chain armor, allowing her ruby red eyes to be seen undeterred, whom is a heavy 2-handed melee specialist with claymore in hand, which is one of the best melee classes in terms of raw damage though it has a number of references toward music in the combat style she chose in Maestro, quickly followed by the legionnaire: Masaru, Legionnaires being the best class for defensive tanking in the game, notably for its powerful aggro generation and damage reduction skills meant to keep enemy attention on these individuals, the warrior decked out with reinforced layered mythril armor, with the ability to disguise his character’s race among the dragonkin whom have bonuses toward HP and defense, making them great tanks, a mythril longsword and tower shield in his hands, prepared to keep himself alive in this fight while the Aegis of the group: Mikuya stood close to Ashikaga with her customized wand, having a tiny pink crystal at the end cap and a crescent moon at the tip of the wand’s shined silver shaft, being the only human in the quartet, wearing very ornate priestess robes colored dark indigo with gold trimmings.

With the battle having started by the warriors’ charge, both Ashikaga and Mikuya waved their magic weapons in a star pattern which is the core element to unleashing their own magic spells; Mikuya casting regeneration magic on the pair to ensure their health remains high since Cryptalion is a remarkably strong beast at a rank which normally requires the combined effort of a sixteen member party to defeat, but they’re determined to do it with only four as a show of pride and recognition since the game offers a wide array of rankings for a great number of events and scenarios and they want to become known for taking down such a powerful beast with such a skeleton crew, though this is hardly their first time fighting Cryptalion so they know the six AI patterns for this boss, but of course, Asteria’s built in AI has been known to randomize enemy patterns at seemingly will, though it’s really done before the fight even begins, to make the game a challenge, while Ashikaga begins to unleash her debuff magicks, the first signs of damage among the party coming from a lightning elemental AoE attack that Masaru leapt to intercept to keep damage solely on him. The only way this battle will end smoothly is if damage is concentrated solely on him, allowing for focused healing on a single person instead of Mikuya rushing to heal everyone’s own HP.

“Stay alert everyone! We have no idea what pattern Cryptalion’s going to use this time. We’ve memorized them all so keep watch for the signs that signify what approach it’ll use, then follow the required plan!”

“Keep the healing strong and consistent Miku, remember to keep your MP high enough so we don’t fall apart!”

“Don’t forget to keep your aggro generation skills in rotation so that beast focuses solely on you Masaru. Keep the aggro on you and I’ll be able to fight with no worries! This boss is clawful after all nya!” Despite the seriousness, Minatoya flashed a cheshire cat smirk at the end as she gave another of her long-lived cat puns, and unlike one of their comrades, Minatoya had been getting away with it for years since she always unleashes her unbeatable puppy dog eyes which forces the people who get irritated to stand down in defeat.

“Boss, I’ll need your help to keep my MP strong if this becomes too drawn out since I’m going to need to use healing spells. Try to avoid expending too much on debuffing Cryptalion. We have our strategy down perfectly. If we’re able to keep to the plan, we should be able to take this guy down in only two and a half hours!”

“I’m unleashing the first round of poison and paralysis. It’ll last about ten minutes and should be able to chip away six percent of its health, which combined with your projected damage percentages, we should be able to reduce his HP by fifteen percent. Minatoya, if you’re going to use Mystic Rando, save it for when Cryptalion has only twenty seven percent HP left or less. We can’t afford to have our only damager knocked out of the fight here. Masaru’s stuck guarding us and I do have to restrain myself to focus on ensuring we’re in good shape with buffs.”

* * *

With the fight proceeding smoothly with Masaru focusing his aggro generation skills in precise rotation to ensure Cryptalion is focused solely on him despite Minatoya tearing it apart with her claymore, Mikuya and Ashikaga largely keeping themselves far away from the ensuing battle, maintaining a tight vigil to ensure the battle plan remains crystal clear, both knowing their position in the fight: Mikuya using her healing magic to keep Masaru’s HP as close to full as possible, and occasionally Minatoya’s when she finds herself struck with AoE attacks, mostly through its tail; making rapid dashes to avoid getting hit as much as possible for her ace in the hole, and Ashikaga using her skills to readjust MP for the party alongside the occasional buff and debuff. Upon the monster making its first move after entering the second phase approximately thirty minutes into the fight, Ashikaga immediately recognized just what to do.

“Okay guys, Cryptalion is using pattern three! Switch to formation Delta!”

Upon reorganizing their positions in accordance to the sudden call from Ashikaga, Minatoya needing the most adjustment to the plan as she charged toward Cryptalion while staying behind it, but Masaru immediately noticed an unusual anomaly in the normally uniform AI patterns: Normally by now, Cryptalion would’ve been jumping in the air with a sideway round-house kick towards the player with the most HP, but instead it leapt backwards to evade Minatoya’s strike against its exposed rear flank and struck with its lion themed arm which sent her reeling far from the group's formation, immediately robbing her of a 1/4th of her HP, turning his head first towards his fellow fighter then to the mage hanging far right of the battlefield

“Oh crap!! Minatoya, fall back!!! Ash, the devs overhauled Cryptalion’s AI with Predator!”

“Nice catch Masaru! Stay alert everyone! We’re in the dark now that the AI is made to be randomized, it’s foolhardy to rely on pre-established formations!”

Despite the unexpected discovery of how Cryptalion’s AI was overhauled with Asteria’s new proprietary Predator system: a system that's said to adjust the ingame artificial intelligence to procedurally generate how it would perform in battle with razor efficiency and human-like unpredictability via next-gen machine learning systems, Ashikaga musing that Predator was designed to analyze all of the recording files of players that fought against Cryptalion that the developers keep in their server, which are rather inconsequential since the size is able to be compressed to mere kilobytes of memory space as the devs reported that the size of the entire collection just barely reaches a single gigabyte of memory space and uses each one to exploit past battles.

Of course, the system is still fairly new as was introduced within the game proper only a month ago after six months in a private test server only administrators have access to, early reports saying that their desire to have all monster AI use Predator was unrealistic as it made the game run at an ungodly slow speed, even with top of the line quantum computers, and decided to have only bosses run with the algorithm and to help further improve performance, the devs decided to divide bosses into their own map when they had been prior part of the dungeons proper, and the team had no idea that they'd be applying the AI system retroactively this far back since Cryptalion was Asteria Prime's very first raid boss which was implemented six years ago.

However, the mere fact that the battle is going so well is more than a little surprising for Ashikaga since she was expecting to have at least some difficulty in fighting Cryptalion since it has built up a legend of killing entire parties while her group of four is making great progress, especially when they are flying blind against predator AI, though the fact they’ve been playing this MMO since its release a decade prior and the great synergy they’ve established since becoming friends, and by extension forming their guild: Helljumpers almost eight years prior, has done much to boost their ability to coordinate their battle formations, and when Cryptalion was left with twenty five percent HP, an effort that only took two hours which was much better time than they originally suspected since they all believed they’d be in far more dire straits, though none are complaining at the ease the fight is presenting them, and with the finale soon at hand, Minatoya dashed about the battlefield towards Masaru

“It’s mew-sic time Masaru, gimme a hand before we’re hiss-tory! Ash, give me a power boost nya!”

“Gladly!”

“Overdrive!” Acting fast to give a needed boost for the warrior before she jumped into action, Ashikaga unleashed one of the strongest spells she has in her roster: Overdrive. The spell is designed to boost an ally’s Strength and Agility by 300% for ten seconds while causing a 300% drop in defensive capabilities, which, when combined with the ultimate all and out skill of the Outriders’ more ‘gimmicky subfield’ in Maestro named Mystic Rando, would have a grand total of 780% increased power when the status of Minatoya’s total HP and stamina, which she has meticulously ensured was kept at max for this one strike, having refused to use any of her skills, using only basic attacks for this moment, is taken into consideration.

With a proud grin, Masaru leapt backwards and quickly moved his shield above his head as Minatoya jumped on top of it and is quickly flung into the air toward Cryptalion with her stance ready to slice through the monster with all the might she has available

“Time to dance a dance of death. Face my ultimate crescendo! Mystic Rando!” Putting the emphasis on separating the timing of Mystic Rando’s incantation, Minatoya spun a full 360 seven times as she slashed against the beast in front of her with overwhelming speed, sliding forward when her feet touched the ground, the skill immediately removing the last of Cryptalion’s HP, making the beast fall to its back in defeat.

* * *

Seeing the beast fall made the quartet stare in disbelief of the scene in front of them, weakly panting from exhaustion since they've been in extreme conditions for two hours and blinking their eyes before the realization dawns on them all, Ashikaga noticing that she expended over three-fourths of her max MP with 15,400 out of 62,000 from all of the mana reallocation she had done during the battle left, in addition to the debuffs and buffs she had dealt to Cryptalion and her team respectively.

“WE DID IT!” All four screamed in utter joy at how this raid team within Helljumpers: Shadow achieved something that was thought to be impossible: killing a top tier boss monster like Cryptalion with only four members, their pride growing when they see a notification above them showing their accomplishment which would be broadcast across the game world, deciding to temporarily call themselves Shadow One, Two, and Three, as the team has a full sixteen roster though they had temporarily split themselves into groups to tackle individual expeditions around the game world.

“Let’s take a picture real quick everyone. We ought to print some copies and hang them in our rooms so we’ll always be able to remember our hard-earned victory.” Saying Ashikaga wanted indisputable proof that a powerful boss like Cryptalion was slain by only four people when it usually required at least a sixteen member party was putting it mildly as she urged everyone to link up in front of the boss’ defeated body.

“Yeah, we should show it to the others in the squad. They’re going to be _so_ mad that we left them out of this battle! I’m eager to see it. Man, I am so claw-ful about this.”

Minatoya laughed at the idea of her fellow guild members being outright ticked off at another of Shadow’s extravagant ventures as the quartet lined up in front of the chimera’s dead body and each made a gleeful pose, though Ashikaga stopped them for a moment since she needed to get one thing off her chest

“Okay Mina, you’re going overboard with that now. Reel it in please?”

“Oh fine, fine. I’ll concede I’ve gone over my usual quota of cat jokes. I’ll stop for the rest of the week if it makes you happy. Let’s just take this damn picture. I want to make the team jealous!”

To the far right, Minatoya stood with her claymore pierced into the ground, her long gold hair having been pushed to the back of her head to not block her sight and red eyes glimmering with joy, the tail on her lower back wagging with joy, Ashikaga in the middle, attempting to convey a confident smirk with one eye closed, even though the kitsune mask on her person hid her facial expression, Masaru standing far left simply having his arms crossed with his massive draconian inspired tower shield on his back, and Mikuya hanging on Ashikaga’s back with her head in between Ashikaga and Minatoya with an outright ecstatic smile of unbridled joy. With their positions set, Ashikaga opened her menu by snapping her index finger with her thumb, selected the option to record either video or image, selecting the latter and set a ten second timer before it would automatically take the picture they wished, all four smiling as the flash came, though only Minatoya’s and Mikuya’s would be visible as Masaru’s face is hidden behind his helmet and Ashikaga behind her mask and vanished in an instant, an inspection revealing the picture coming out perfectly as she enlarged it. After finding it satisfactory, she turned to face her friends and swiped the image three times to send the file to send it to each of them, the smiles on their faces returning only goes to show how important the success of this fight and the picture was to them.

“Well, let’s get back to Phare, I imagine the team will want to celebrate our victory over Cryptalion and we’ve got a lot of treasure we have to donate to the city treasury. Hopefully it’ll be able to sustain us for a while since Phare’s economy is not exactly doing all that well. We need to start reopening trade, though it certainly is challenging doing that with a floating island city like Phare. While it does guarantee complete safety from bandits and monsters, it has a 75% economic penalty since it’s a nightmare trying to reach it conventionally. Well, at least floating islands offer outright gorgeous sights so it seems attractive on the surface. Let’s grab the loot from the treasury, cross through the portal, and teleport back.”

* * *

Opening the door which locked the way to the treasury and helping themselves to fifteen million Manats kept in the great number of treasure chests scattered about the room, Manats being the currency in Asteria Prime, in addition to many great items and weapons worth nearly as much, which, by itself should be able to sustain Phare for another month, and crossed through the portal, finding themselves in the jungle landscape belonging to the lone city state belonging to the Xelionia Union which is both one of the most prosperous countries in the world of Ibrilia despite its young age and the most dangerous region in the world, with the continent of Uscaria playing host to five factions: the Thadova Federation, the Osana Alliance, the Striodor Republic, the Altena Theocracy, and the newly implemented Xelionia Union, brought into the game only last year. And to the amazement of the community, the establishment of the Union was preceded by a global monster-slaying event in what was considered uncharted territory at the time, with the event stating that the outcome, which ended up being the condition of the citystate for the first year, would depend on how well or poorly the individual servers did, and the three servers that did the best were the Japanese, American, and Chinese servers in order. While the latter two achieved their scores by smashing through the monsters independently, Japan had earned the top place through their traditional sense of unity as the top twelve guilds in the server arranged a meeting before the event happened and agreed to establish a temporary forward operating base in the region that would accommodate the players and organize their efforts efficiently with the might of thousands of players behind them. Within the global community of Asteria Prime, Japan has been seen as one of their strongest pillars since they have proven that they can maintain civility and can police themselves without the developers stepping in while the other servers needed steps to keep things orderly aside from system-wide implementations like chat filters.

With their goal accomplished, Shadow One teleported themselves to the floating island city they and their guild own within the borders of Thadova: Phare, the island itself being about an eighth the size of Tokyo and the city taking up half of the island, whose buildings mirror that of Thadova’s native cities which were inspired by medieval German architecture with a castle, similar in design to Burg Hohenzollern in Hechingen, overshadowing the entire town which incidentally is Helljumpers’ base of operations. Upon their arrival to the city’s outer border, they are met with the sight of the nameless NPC city guards decked in full armor that hides their appearance, which was done to reduce costs for designing appearances for unimportant NPCs, that patrol the region

“Welcome back to Phare Masters Ashikaga, Masaru, Minatoya, and Mikuya.”

“Glad to be back. Can you open the gates for us? We are eager to return to base so we can add funds to the treasury.”

“Of course.”

* * *

After the guards pushed open the gates to the city, the quartet walked through the shined city streets made out of limestone, many members of Helljumpers walking about the city, seeing the sights of various shops and stalls selling their respective wares as they noticed one of Helljumpers’ initial guild members window shopping at a jeweler’s tent: Shima, her rose pink hair and eyes making her stick out like a sore thumb when nearly everyone around her has brown, black, or the occasional red hair, with a layered pink dress to fit; her entire character in the game being built around aesthetics over practicality, her flimsy reasoning is how she chose to be a Windwalker but utterly failed the means of mastering such a play style unlike Ashikaga, Alexandar, and Erwin. The only two reasons Helljumpers keeps her in the guild, as far as they say, is her exceptional knowledge of economics which they simply cannot afford to discard since their high costs nearly always cripple their funding, but always manage to recover with Shima’s help, and while they do not pull rank, the fact Shima is friends with Ashikaga and the original members of her Shadow unit in real life helps a little bit since Ashikaga is the one who founded Helljumpers and is officially its guild leader, but as the guild began to grow to the size it is now, she shifted control to a council she appointed as she doesn’t want to be the one solely responsible for such a large guild since her focus would be strained to the breaking point, though the game itself recognizes Ashikaga as the one in charge since she founded the guild eight years ago.

Of course, some give Shima some slack since she was brave enough to choose the Windwalker class when it was publicly known as the worst class in the history of MMO classes to the point where, out of Asteria Prime’s player population of thirty eight million players in the japanese server alone, with a total population of over four hundred million throughout the world, there are only fifty Windwalkers in the Japanese server, with the other fifty being scattered throughout the different servers, and within this server, only fifteen Windwalkers have managed to learn the style necessary for the class and among the fifteen who learned the quirk, only six players have mastered it: Ashikaga, Maze, Alexandar, Claude, Erwin, and Kristi. Remarkably, among those six, three of them are within Helljumpers’ ranks: Ashikaga, Alexandar, and Erwin, while the other three are independent or with other guilds. To emphasize how ‘terrible’ Windwalkers typically are compared to the other classes, Asteria’s level cap is currently at 250, confirmed to rise to 300 in the next update, and the highest level Windwalker: Maze, is at level 60 and Ashikaga is a close runner-up at level 47, with the others being in the low to mid twenties or thirties but despite these claims at fame within the playerbase, they are very weak stat-wise and can be easily killed by even a level ten Outrider, and many of the veteran Outriders are already at the level cap, which make Windwalkers ill-suited to PvP. And to further emphasize how exceptional these high leveled Windwalkers are, EXP can only be earned through combat against monsters so Windwalkers have to use their nonexistent defense and their very limited offensive capabilities in the three spells or the various debuff magicks in their arsenal they have to increase their level. Every Windwalker in the game, the same feeling being shared by many sympathetic players who work alongside these Windwalkers, feel like the designer of the class is an unparalleled sadist, but the ones who were able to turn fate are determined to persevere despite the hurdles with a disputed belief by three of the Windwalkers: Ashikaga, Claude, and Kristi that the weak stats and minimal combat skills are necessary to prevent the class from becoming utter gamebreakers since their massive MP reservoirs, combined with their arsenal of debilitation spells, already make them broken if played right. They argue that they’re simply not meant to be offensive fighters in any meaningful way but every Windwalker in the server agrees that they wish there was a way to get Windwalkers easier experience enough to cement their potential which tends to start around level 30, primarily to get more people to join Asteria Prime as Windwalkers, since they are generally considered extremely valuable, yet risky, ornaments of pride to guilds to acquire.

“Window shopping again Shima?”

“Oh hey Masaru. Kinda, but not really. I’m checking through all the city stores to make sure they’re not shutting their doors. I had to cut taxes so much that we’re barely making any money from the merchants. It’s the only way these guys will have any money and keep Phare’s economy from collapsing upon itself.” Stopping herself to briefly exhale and inhale, she turned to face Ashikaga “Ashikaga, we seriously need to consider relocating Helljumpers down to the ground. We’re burning through millions of Manats every month that could go toward more long-term investments ensuring self-reliance and not force our raid teams to undergo such large-scale expeditions all the time.”

“Speaking of the expeditions, are the others still in the field? We timed ourselves to figuratively return at the same time.”

“Unfortunately no Minatoya. They got exterminated and got back about a half hour ago. They came back with about six hundred thousand Manats each. They’re strong sure, but they’re not exactly experienced enough to fight in such small teams as effectively as you four. Elwing and Shiranui are nervous to see you guys; they’re worried you’re going to punish them for failing their missions. Please tell me you guys succeeded and brought at least some money to justify authorizing such a dangerous expedition and splitting Shadow into three groups.”

“We succeeded, don’t worry Shima. And we’re not going to punish them when we know they did the best they could with their few numbers. We made enough to last us another month, and after the update coming next week, there’s going to be extremely advanced dungeons added with rewards at a hundred million Manat per run, with a party size requirement of sixteen at the smallest. With the full might of Shadow behind us, I sincerely doubt that it would be a challenge for us, and let’s not forget the fact they’re going to be instance dungeons so Helljumpers can deploy multiple units at once. If we send ten units at once and all succeed, we’d be getting a billion Manats, which would mean we’d only have to send teams maybe every four to six months instead of what basically feels like twice a month. We’d likely need to consider undergoing those dungeons every now and then since I do want to keep us here on Phare, though in the end, it’s up to the council leaders to make that call. Anyway, we ought to get going guys. Enjoy your window shopping Shima.”

“Actually wait! I just remembered, but Maze is here; he wants to talk with you guys.”

“M-Maze himself?! He’s a living legend!!!”

* * *

Any sort of calm serenity was instantly shattered as Masaru and Minatoya dashed toward the castle, utter enthusiasm and joy in their faces with Mikuya in close pursuit, though Ashikaga kept a slower speed as she followed her friends since she felt worried about the idea of Maze wanting to join Helljumpers, since it’s within the top 3 guilds in Asteria Prime. Since they are an efficiency oriented guild, if someone better than her in her field joins, she fears she’d very likely be shifted toward auxiliary roles, much like many of the weaker members within the guild, having over twenty five thousand members split into several divisions based on individual roles and specialities. While they were not rigid roleplayers or treated their lives inside the game as seriously as reality, they still treated the guild as a professional business, sticking their members where they were best suited, or in some cases reassigned if their efficiency dropped. If a better Windwalker than her, like Maze, joined, she’d very likely be shifted to be in the auxiliary combat units instead of the core teams where she is now unless she could convince the other leaders to keep her where she is regardless of the roster, or if he proved to be not as skilled a tactician than her since she was appointed to lead Shadow because she was very good with combat formations and plans. Because of the Windwalkers’ rarity, Helljumpers likes to keep them varied so everyone has access to their unique skill sets.

Walking around the city, Ashikaga noticed Shadow’s residential shrine maiden: Shiranui hunched over a table in a sidewalk cafe, her face lying down on the table doing more than enough showing that she is borderline depressed, her green hair being rather short yet kept in a long ponytail, wearing light plated armor themed around japanese shrine maidens but colored with more monochrome black and silver than the customary red and white, the design actually having been contributed by Ashikaga who created it with a side application Asteria launched alongside with that allows more artistic players within the community to submit designs for weapons, items, armor, and even monsters as it was something of a tradition for Shadow to receive this type of custom equipment from Ashikaga since, not only does it offer aesthetic flair seldom found within the game, it receives the skill: Adaptability which is essentially akin to level scaling tailored around the individual’s playstyle. The application itself had been considered an unusual boon for the game’s popularity as the amount of items and monsters created by the developers amounted to less than ten percent, even the raid bosses as the first one within the japanese server was actually a collaboration between six artists.

And when it came to Shadow’s namesake, Ashikaga carefully designed each of her teammates’ armor to fit the dark color scheme while allowing other colors to blend in, often using subtle bronze gold or rose red as an equalizer with the silver and black color schemes of their outfits.

“You okay Shira?” Even though she had heard about the situation from Shima, she wanted to hear it from one of the people involved in the operation, calling the Demonbinder, Asteria’s version of the Summoner class: Shiranui by her nickname of Shira.

Shiranui weakly raised her head to face her team leader after hearing Ashikaga call out to her “Oh. Hey boss. To answer your question no. We got decimated. It sucks, but we made the tiniest miscalculation and it caused an utter party wipe. Same with Shadow Two according to what Elwing said. Honestly, we envy the cohesion you four have. Of course, I’m not exactly in a position where I can complain since I was assigned to replace one of your old members, Nanak. Same with Talia replacing Morita and Macha filling in for Miyake permanently. Talia and I have only been with you guys here in Shadow for two months so we don’t have that great of synergy built with the other members compared to your original generation.”

“Don’t feel so discouraged Shira. Shadow’s meant to be a unified force whereas Masaru, Minatoya, Mikuya, and I have experience fighting together in a small group since our team predates Helljumpers. That and it’s because our classes have great synergy. Minatoya is our melee DPS, Masaru our tank, Mikuya our healer, and I’m support. Look, don’t let this loss get you down in the dumps. Remember that each one of you is valuable to our team. You were all assigned to Shadow here in Helljumpers for a reason. Yes, you were sent to us because we’ve had people leave, but we’re nothing if adaptable. Besides, the council thought you and Talia were worthy for Shadow above everyone else and I’m not going to question them.”

Hearing Ashikaga say this, reassuring her value, and by extension the other members of Shadow, to Helljumpers was just about enough to give her some needed morale and restore a relieved expression

“I was really worried there; especially since we were dreading the idea that you’d reprimand us. Remember that we are an efficiency oriented guild and I’m not all that aware of your practices here in Shadow.”

“Don’t worry. Let me clue you in on a little secret of sorts.” Beckoning Shiranui to get closer, Ashikaga moved her head to whisper in the other’s ear ‘ _Our ‘failures are still leagues better than what the average member here in Helljumpers can achieve. Even at our worst Shira, we’re still Helljumpers’ best._ ’

“Thanks Ashikaga, I needed this. I need to get going though, got a lot of preparations to make for Golden Week next month. And don’t worry, you guys in Shadow are invited. I’ll even send a few cars your way and let you all stay in the shrine as long as you guys want.” In contrast to the melancholy she was suffering from, Shira serenely chuckled at the mention of personally inviting her group to the shrine and even offering sanctuary for that week “Have to say, it’s a huge pain trying to get a shrine ready. And it’s my first time organizing everything since the priest retired and left the shrine to me.”

“Oh yeah, I remember you saying you were newly initiated among the shrine maidens when you joined Helljumpers a long time ago. By the way, how are you able to juggle that? You’ve never told me.”

“Despite what the lifestyle would suggest, shrine maidens are still people. We have base desires much like anyone else and we keep chores on rotation. That allowed me to plan my schedule around playing here. Needless to say, I got called a nerd by them more than once, but I don’t care. I like playing Asteria Prime to unwind.”

“Can’t you stay a while longer Suna-san? We’re planning on throwing a party.” Ashikaga waited to see if any players were around before talking since she was going to be delving a little into real life and didn’t want anyone overhearing.

“Hmm...maybe. I need to see if the miko can handle the task. I’ll try to come back online in about ten minutes, half hour at the most, and let you know if I can spare the time. See you at HQ Kaga.” With this, followed with a proud grin, Shira logged out of the game, her body enveloped with three circular beams of data rising and fall which is standard fare for the game’s systems in the eyes of players using VR.

“Heh, what a dichotomy. Shira plays the whole Yamato Nadeshiko part pretty well in real life, and here to an extent, but when she gets into battle, she’s like a crazed harpy. That woman is scary, especially with how she freaking dual wields battleaxes!...She would kill me if she heard me saying this.”

* * *

Departing the cafe and walking toward the castle via the long spiral pathway extending outward from the plateau, Ashikaga looked left and right to the outdoor training fields which are on the lowest floor of the castle itself to see dozens of Helljumpers members training against either each other or wood or metal dummies, but was stopped at the castle entrance when she recognized the group in front of her: Electron, the team being one of Helljumpers’ six primary raid teams. The fact that Helljumpers has six teams goes to show how powerful this guild is since maintaining raid teams are extremely taxing on funding, especially when most of Asteria’s raid teams typically work on contract, yet they can afford to have six alongside the thousands of members among their ranks, especially when the average guild could only handle having one raid team working with them at most or even half a team in certain scenarios. Within Helljumpers’ ranks, while Shadow and Electron are in-house raid teams composed of native members, Gold Guard, Behemoth, Primordia, and Apex were all contracted to assist Helljumpers in their operations though their credo typically involves anonymity in whatever raid they get involved in, best shown through the typical mantra most raid teams working through contract which combines two notable Latin phrases: Non ducor, duco and contra felicem vix deus vires habet, which typically translates as: I am not led, I lead and Against the lucky even the gods are powerless. Basically, the raid teams lead themselves via their autonomy and they pride themselves as being strong enough to topple anything in their path, even if they are designated as deities.

However, even though the guild has two teams in-house, it doesn't mean that they're all that cooperative since Shadow and Electron have always been bitter rivals, as they constant vye for the position of being the best among Helljumper’s raid teams, the leader: Orion being a large Dragonkin at nearly 8 feet, decked out in mythril armor much like Masaru.

“Well well well, what do we have here? A stray lamb from Shadow, acting all high and mighty over the masses.”

“Get out of my way Orion. I need to join the other members of Shadow.”

“And what if I don’t want to? It’s high time Shadow gets knocked down a peg and who else should do it than Electron? Helljumpers’ _best_ combat team.”

“You’re deluding yourself. Electron may have three times as many members as Shadow, but you can’t reach our skill. End of story.”

“We’ll see about that! Weapons free!” With this angry growl, every member of Orion drew their weapons as they readied themselves to lunge against Ash.

Inspecting the environment around her, namely a certain lizardman on an overhead balcony, three vials in his hand, ready to pounce into action, Ashikaga simply smirked “Very well, I’ll play your game. Nighty night, nimrods!”

* * *

Jumping backward the moment she saw the vials thrown, the group of fifty were affected by the release of white gas, which the game recognizes as sleeping gas, falling to the ground, their interface showing they’ve all been afflicted with sleep and moments later, the large blue scaled lizard man, at eight feet much like Orion, landed behind the group, a red sash and a white cloak covering indigo and gold colored armor constituting his apparel and the kanji for ‘Fierce Warrior’ embedded on his chest

“Thanks Vardune. I would’ve been in a lot of trouble without you jumping in.” ‘ _I get the whole ‘divide real life from gaming’ thing, but I wish Orion didn’t act like such an insufferable ass all the time and let his real self show at least a little. While he’s not a saint without flaw, he’s not as rude as he makes himself seem here in Asteria. Then again, Minatoya is the same away, but reversed I suppose. She calmed herself down but she became obsessed with those cat puns._ ’

“D-Don’t mention it. You saved me so times, it’s only right I try to pay you back.” In contrast to his utterly terrifying appearance and aura, Vardune’s voice was anything but, it being outright demure coming from his social anxiety, mostly borne from bad experiences he went through in the past two years, his older brother and younger sister being subject of karoshi, having discussed it briefly with his fellow members in Shadow in the past, save Shiranui and Talia since they replaced former members: Nanak and Morita rather recently, the idea horrifying them all because of its destructive nature on people, the fact that he felt comfortable even talking about it only proved how much the group made themselves feel like family to each other. Vardune was lucky enough to avoid such a fate because of his job as a stay-at-home website designer and programmer. Structuring his job to be done at home allows him to avoid karoshi to some degree by setting his own hours.

“Come on, we need to rendezvous with the rest of Shadow.”

“R-Right. Let me keep an eye on them for a moment, just to be sure these bastards don’t wake up too soon. Elwing went to get Macha, Ishtar, and Hifarn as soon as she heard Electron was on the move. Honestly, the pricks are always trying to one-up us in some way and there is open PvP.”

* * *

Rushing upward to enter the castle proper, she is met with the sight of her reinforcement team running towards her: the dragonkin Elwing draped in full shadowy black armor with gold trimmings, her kiteshield having been granted by one of the six dragon lords who resides in the Cruwem Mountain Range within Striodor territory: Heilong of Crimson Flame, Macha playing up the role of thief perfectly with a shadowy black leather cloak, her face hidden behind a coif though her red hair and eyes are somewhat visible, and much like Elwing, Hifarn, also a dragonkin, was equipped in full armor, except his being iris blue and adamant green trimmings.

“Are you okay boss?!” As Ashikaga had expected, as soon as Elwing got within range, she had started looking Ash over for any kind of injuries.

“I’m-fine-Elwing. Vardune used some of his sleeping tonics to buy me some time.” Ashikaga had to speak rather slowly as she was being frisked by her XO which was slowing down her reaction to a small extent.

As soon the individual was brought up, he appeared behind Ashikaga, his signature double-sided spear behind his back

“Thanks for saving the boss Vardune. If we knew Electron was here, we would’ve been more alert. Dammit, I should’ve tried finding Primordia since they’re on friendly terms with us. They surely would’ve given us some back-up. Come on, let’s get to Shadow’s subwing. Quick!”

After Elwing finished speaking, she gestured the others to advance toward Shadow’s personal wing in the castle, which is its own instanced map independent from the castle’s main overworld, herself slowly walking backwards warily, keeping an eye in the direction of the castle entrance until they arrived at the entrance, which is locked to their own members. Upon entering, a growl is heard from a nearby room

“Oh, I am going to kill _youuuuuu_!” A second passed after this shout, the sensation of the ground shaking and a wall being ran into with such vicious force that it made Ashikaga and Macha fall to the ground, though that was not to say that the residential lizardman and dragonkin were unaffected from impact, Vardune helping Ashikaga up while Elwing did the same for Macha.

“Uuu...looks like Traugh went on a rampage again. My ears are ringing…”

“I think I know what set him off this time Macha.” Even though Traugh was always quick to anger among them all since he has a very unpleasant job in real life, he was never _this_ trigger-happy, though Ashikaga suspected that Masaru bragging about her group’s victory had set him off.

* * *

Walking through the rooms, they quickly found everyone assembled in the lounge, the green skinned orc: Traugh on his back, Masaru towering over him with the most condescending aura emanating from his person

“Missed me piggie~. You suck at direction by the way.”

“H-Hey! Masaru, why are you fighting Traugh right now?! I know I haven’t been in Shadow all that long compared to you all so I don’t think I have much right to complain, but can’t you just sto-?”

“Macha, don’t even try. Traugh and Masaru have been _pitter_ rivals since day one. Don’t expect them to be _quitters_ any time soon!” Unlike the sheepish sounding lizardman in Vardune clashing with his appearance, the undead mage in Casimir’s voice was the typical cackling one would expect from undead in fantasy settings, it being a setting Casimir keeps enabled since he likes the voice, though everyone else in the team detests it to varying degrees, especially since Casimir has tendencies to troll them all with his antics and worse, his puns when the mood strikes him, and the fact he pulled one of the worst ones within the last month made everyone outright groan in annoyance. The only exception is Minatoya since she indulges in these jokes as well so she restrains herself soas to avoid any sort of hypocrisy even though she genuinely despises the puns as well.

“Casimir, are you serious?! You’re pulling a pun now of all times?!” While the others in Shadow typically just groan in disbelief over Casimir’s puns, Talia generally is the one most annoyed over his antics enough to drive her into a near frenzy.

“His horrible pun aside, Casimir has a point there rook. Just let it go.” Even though she prides herself as the peacekeeper of the family, especially when the ‘big sister’ of the group in Miyake retired from Asteria, Otohime had long since decided to overlook the rivalry between them and attempted to discourage Macha from getting involved in the inevitable.

“They’re right Macha. Ashikaga, Minatoya, and I have known Masaru for ages, before Shadow; before Helljumpers. And of course, this applies to all of us here in Shadow, well, Talia and Shira, and I guess Macha aside? Miyake’s on indefinite hiatus because of her growing popularity as a seiyuu, Nanak went on to spread his wings and form a new guild here in Asteria, and Morita decided to leave the game outright to focus on his family.”

Ashikaga was about to speak up but stopped as she took a quick roll call of the people around her, finding only her sixteen member team, save Shiranui since she’s offline right now, when she was expecting an addition “Hey, I heard Shima say that Maze came to see us, do you guys know where he is?”

“He’s with the council, getting the authorization to enter our wing since the privacy settings were set so we have our private quarters, same with the other raid teams and Helljumpers’ established divisions. Remember that Maze isn’t a member of the guild. Er, not going to lie boss, but I’m kind of surprised you weren’t informed of this. You may have delegated authority to the council years ago, but you’re still Helljumpers’ guild leader.”

“Yeah, I am too-” Answering Liatris’ comment about how Ashikaga transferred authority of as many capabilities as possible to the council, the only exceptions were high-tier system capabilities restricted to her, pausing as she opened her menu and looked through her private messages, swiftly flashing an embarrassed blush on her cheeks “Er...looks like they did tell me about Maze coming.”

“Are you kidding? How do you forget something like this?!”

“H-Hey now, give me a bit of slack Liatris! They sent me this message while I was fighting Cryptalion! I’m not going to focusing my attention on DMs when we were at risk of a party wipe because of the Predator AI overhaul.”

“Ehhh, fair enough. I envy you four.”

“Girlie has a point if I may be honest. It’s as if your synergy is boulder to boulder solid-”

“Oh my god, stop with these damn puns already!!!”

“Casimir, you mind if you stop for now? Look, the team’s not exactly in the greatest of moods, and remember that Talia’s not used to your sense of humor. The rest of us have gotten used to it, Macha’s been an understudy for Miyake for the past couple of years so she knows you and Shiranui’s not here, that and she’s extraordinarily calm under fire.”

“Sorry boss. I’ll restrain myself. Can’t have the lady wanting to kill me after all.”

“Okay everyone, take five and disperse. We’re going to have a celebrity coming to visit and I don’t want us to be seen as a raving band of marauders. Go take some time to unwind.”

* * *

After hearing Ashikaga’s request, the group began to spread out through the wing: Minatoya and Otohime heading north to one of the neighboring rooms that they modeled to resemble a recording booth as the two of them, alongside Elwing, are fairly accomplished singers and often perform together in their online performances, Adalard, Hifarn, Ishtar, and Macha heading to a corner to play another round of their favorite past-time of Shiritori, Mikuya, Liatris, and Talia deciding to join Masaru, Casimir, and Vardune in combat training while Traugh silently stomped away in anger to vent out some of his frustrations, leaving Ashikaga alone in the common room with Elwing, soon joined by Shiranui who had returned to the wing, the former dropping down to a single knee.

“I’m sorry for letting you down boss. Even with Casimir’s brilliant tactical and strategic capabilities and the strength of the team I had access to, we still lost. Badly.”

“Don’t worry about it Elwing, we had no idea that the developers would be applying the Predator AI retroactively so the raid bosses are extremely difficult to fight now since they no longer have pre-ordained attack patterns. From now on, we’re going to have to fight together since we can no longer predict how raid bosses will act.”

“Wow, um...I didn’t expect you to go so far and bend heel to Kaga Wingy. You really play the whole retainer to her shogun idea seriously.”

“I-I-!” Elwing’s head immediately shot up when she heard Shirayuki speak to her, her face glowing a bright crimson out of embarrassment since she hadn’t heard her enter.

“Oh leave her be Shira, you have your way to vent frustration, Elwing has her own. Incidentally, I don’t exactly like you teasing my second in command. Remember that she has seniority over you.”

"W-Wait, I didn't mean to-!"

“Haha, now you’re the one teasing her boss.”

Scratching her cheek at how Elwing schooled her, Ashikaga then had her attention pulled away as she saw a PM notification from a member of the guild’s council in the upper left corner of her peripheral vision, opening it immediately after

[ **Ashikaga, we’ve given Maze the needed authorizations to enter your wing. Expect him any minute. Assemble your team.** ]

“Okay Elwing, Shira, Maze is on his way, go get the others.”

* * *

Nodding in acknowledgement, the pair split up to reunite the team who were scattered around the various rooms as Ashikaga walked over toward a couch in the middle of the room, the team reuniting and dispersing about the room as the guest of honor appeared though what they saw surprised them all, to the point where their eyes figuratively shrunk to tiny dots, as a figure wearing a bulky full body emperor penguin suit waddled into the room, all eyes darting toward Ashikaga as she inaudibly gulped out of unease, wondering just what is going on.

“Uh...you’re...Maze right?”

“Maze I am, yes. Blessed am I to meet you. A huge fan I am.” Much like her own, Ashikaga and the group quickly realized that Maze’s voice is ambiguous and difficult to ascertain their gender though where Ashikaga employs obvious machine scrambling, Maze’s voice appears far more genuine and difficult to pin down. At the same time, Ashikaga admittedly uses a very cheap version of the software and she knows there are very ornate versions with features that would be more in line with the idea of science-fiction.

Nervously chuckling in response, Ashikaga rose up from where she was sitting and approached Maze, extending her hand outwards and shook his hand before returning back to her seat, gesturing Maze to sit in the chair in front of her across the table

“Er, yeah. I’m pleased to meet you too Maze. If you don’t mind my asking, is your way of speaking some character I’m unaware of?”

“A character I am playing, yes. Benefits my purpose very well it does. Loner wolf I am. Loner wolf for many a year.”

“O...kay. If you’re a lone wolf, why come to the HQ of one of the largest guilds in the server?” As challenging as it is for her to follow along with Maze’s peculiar form of speaking through this clearly RP persona they created, Ashikaga did her best to push it to the side in her conversation.

“Many reasons. Difficult and perilous upcoming trials will be. Perilous and exciting. Challenging, solo playing will be. To join a powerful guild, beneficial it is very. Many resources, your guild: Helljumper possesses. Contribute I desire to.”

“Wait, you want to _join_ Helljumpers?”

“Indeed.”

“But...why come to me to ask? The council oversees much of the recruitment and each division has three officers who can accept any request to join the guild. Aside from my team here, I have zero leadership with the guild.”

While Ashikaga knew that she was lying in a small way when it comes to the game mechanics, she did mean it when she said she relinquished power to the council. If anything, she’s surprised that Maze even knows of that kind of affiliation since the information has been restricted to a small number of people: her team, the council within Helljumpers, and a number of the original players that joined eight years ago since Helljumpers was expanding at a rapid pace to the point where Ashikaga just didn’t feel comfortable leading the guild. Ashikaga even wonders how Maze got that information since it’s not even readily available in any public records and like he said, Maze has been a lone wolf and there has been very few instances among the players where they had any sort of interaction with Maze.

“Not according to my sources: Guild Leader Ashikaga.”

‘ _How did Maze get this information in the first place?_ ’ “If you don’t mind my asking about this one, why are you wearing a penguin suit?”

“Special custom armor it is. Unorothodox methods it was created by. Offers valuable enchantments for Windwalkers it does. Most valuable is 20% mana regeneration in battle within twenty seconds. Combined with acrobatics, martial arts, and parkour, powerful weapons they are within VR.”

This single revelation sent the entire group into shock at the idea of what Maze possesses: Her armor, which resembles cosplay more than actual armor, possesses an enchantment that would trivialize the Windwalkers’ abilities of buffing and debuffing, something that intrigues Ashikaga since she herself can’t spam the abilities in long battles like raids even though the cooldowns would allow her to while Maze can if what he says is true, which Ashikaga assumes is a secret of how Maze is so much higher leveled than she is

“One last thing Maze. How do you know that I’m the guild leader? That kind of information is near impossible to find since I shifted gears very soon into Helljumpers’ formation. Only a handful of people even know this.” This is where Ashikaga began to display an invisible sense of tranquil rage, wanting to know how Maze has the information he has, feeling confused when she heard a chuckle escape him.

“It’s because I’m more familiar with your background than you think young Ashikaga. Remember that Asteria Prime allows nicknames that can overwrite a character’s base name. Maybe this will trigger some memories in you.” Tilting her head in confusion, she saw Maze rise from his seat and unequipped the penguin suit he had been wearing, revealing the individual underneath as a slender female elf with long blonde hair and green eyes wearing a fairly minimalistic white dress with green dragon scales occupying several parts of her body, namely her arms, waist, and around her upper chest which lacks the material around her underarms, and a small amount of cleavage four shaped horns embedded on her forehead and the top of her skull, her character model sharing the same level of detail as any other because of the gradual updates the devs implemented which always improved the character models both proactively and retroactively, the sight shocking Ashikaga, Masaru, Minatoya, and Mikuya as a gentle, yet smug, smile appeared on her face “I’m glad I could finally reveal myself after all these years kiddos.”

“LUNA!” Minatoya and Mikuya rushed forward the elf immediately after their minds processed what they were seeing, Masaru joining suite after them while Ashikaga stays put, not wanting to overwhelm her with the trio swarming her, feeling a nudge on her right shoulder, tilting her head to see Elwing hovering over her

“You know her boss?”

“Yeah. Guys, meet our old mentor back during Asteria’s first two years: Luna, who incidentally was Japan's very first Windwalker. Heh, I never expected to see her after she left all those years ago.”


End file.
